Jezibeth ‘Jez’ Kyte – Half-Mane

I am reading the Black Lung Captain at the moment and Jez is as formidable as ever. The crew has just seen her in action for the first time and are having all kinds of weird thoughts at the moment. She is one of the principal characters in the Tales of the Kitty Jay and in my book the most interesting with her half-mane nature. This retro futuristic world has their own Flying Dutchmen, only these ones are no ghosts. One of them started to convert her but was destroyed before he could finish, so now she is somewhere in between hearing the Manes and forever being afraid to turn. She is the strangely competent navigator of the Kitty Jay.

Sarah – Cyborized Gun-for-hire

Sarah, a cyborized gun-for-hire, teams up with Ex-fighter pilot Cowboy, “hardwired” via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware to make a last stab at independence from the rapacious Orbitals.

This one looks cheesy but on occasion I like cheesy. New for me and there is two other books in the same series.

Teela Brown – Born Lucky

Teela was the fourth crewmember sought by the Puppeteer Nessus for the expedition to the Ringworld. Her sole qualification was the Puppeteer’s trust in Teela’s luck: She was the descendant of six generations of winners of the Birthright lottery. Teela could be called the “good luck charm” of the expedition.

As I understand it Teela also figures in Ringworld’s Children (1979) and The Ringworld Engineers (2004). I might have read this one way back but I don’t remember much.

Lore Van de Oest – Playing Spanner’s Game

Most of these are new to me and this one gives me a Citizen of the Galaxy vibe from the blurb. I definitely think I need to get this one.

She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van Oesterling had been the daughter of one of the world’s most powerful families…and now she was nobody, and she had to hide.

Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped…but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed.

Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner…and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and creating a new future.

But to start again, Lore required Spanner’s talents—Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner’s game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van Oesterling to be paid. Only by confronting her family, her past, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be…

Dion is a healer and a wolfwalker living in a mysterious future world. She and Tara are both new to me but this looks interesting i love psionics like in Catspaw and Slan. Dion has a unique telepathic bond that she shared with the wolf Gray Hishn who sometimes seemed to amplify her sensitivity to her patients.

The books have psionics, angry slavers, war and death in the wilderness, secret of the ancients and aliens.